Yet, for all the formidible technical and financial barriers of entry to the domain of professional grade video, the rewards appear scanty. Despite skill sets on par with physicians, dentists, or engineers, they sure don't enjoy the same demand, pay, or recognition.

To be fair, those professions bear a much higher burden of responsibility for screw-ups. And I'm not at all convinced that their skill sets aren't a fair bit higher.

Were pay based on risk of catastrophe, wouldn't school bus drivers (or Army privates) be near the top of the pay scale?

The academic and test screens required to enter a medical profession are quite high, but most of the practitioners end up doing things that are very perfunctory or that palliate but can't cure. Medical care is also a very vast field with plenty of room for people besides micro surgery.

Entry into the camera or editing field of media production is less guided by formal certifications, but very difficult nonetheless. Applicants are expected to know a whole slew of things, or do the impossible, unless of course an uncle is underwriting the production. Works do bomb or get rejected by clients. The field employs fewer than 50k people in the whole US. The pay is rotten, the security nil. The history of Dreamworks is illustrative. The (mis-) perception that editing demands little skill, though, is widespread (even among studio producers and directors) and certainly discourages the practitioners.